20 Under 40 - 1995 Profile: Adam Liptak

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 1995

As a copy aide 10 years ago for The New York Times, Adam Liptak got to do a little writing and reporting—like the time he backed up the reporter covering Gen. William Westmoreland's libel suit against CBS.

Ultimately, Liptak became an attorney to satisfy dual interests in journalism and First Amendment law, but that brief newsroom stint helps him work with editors and reporters. "I have a good sense of newsroom culture," he says. "I'm not here to kill stories. I'm here to get stories into the newspaper."

Fortunately,TheNewYork Times has neither lost nor settled a libel case since the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan, in 1964 "and I don't want to be the first." Still, he says, "Getting sued is a drag." At any given time, about 30 libel suits are pending against the Times' properties. Other media-law issues are on the rise, however—particularly subpoenas for testimony and records, Liptak observes.

Within the past year, Liptak successfully fought a subpoena for documents showing the Brown & Williamson tobacco company knew for decades about the health risks of smoking. He also won access to a federal civil-rights trial of a youth charged with the slaying of a rabbinical student in Brooklyn's Crown Heights area.

Although he left behind his own reporting career, the experience helped confirm his goal of working for the Times instead of pursuing the law-firm partnership track. Of his experience with the Westmoreland case, he recalls, "It taught me two things: that free-speech trials are interesting, and that courtroom note-taking is very difficult."